Category Archives: Excursions

Vienna excursion 2012 – Day 3

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Today was our 3rd day in Vienna and I really must admit that it is probably the most beautiful city I have visited. Every street I walk down, I sense the coexistence of history, poshness, and nonetheless extreme livability. Today our activities included the more historical and political facets of Austria’s capitol city. First we went on a very in depth tour of the Austrian National Library. Located in the Hofburg palace, I would hardly say this library was comparable to Waidner-Spahr. It was ornate and filled with numerous original prints, such as Martin Luther’s bible. Three hours and a passionate tour guide later, the group was on to our next tour, this time of Parliament. The tour gave an informative insight into the government of a once powerhouse country. With my free time afterwards, I ventured into another part of the city to find the house of none other than Sigmund Freud. As the daughter of two clinical psychologists, it was truly exciting just walking through Freud’s residence, where he lived until 1938 when he was forced to flee to London due to his Jewish ancestry. Vienna has really surpassed my expectations and even in a tightly packed week of tours, meals, and museums, there is so much more I hope to experience during another visit in the future.

 

Vienna Excursion 2012 – Day 2

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We all anticipated today, our first full day of sightseeing and touring the city. The day started early with an awesome breakfast spread at the hotel consisting of bread, cheese, and meat, but, most importantly, a personal pot of coffee. Satisfied and energized from breakfast we set off to meet our tour guide outside of the Albertina Museum. It was a beautiful morning and with sunshine greeting our anxious, glowing faces we started off on our tour. The tour could not have been neater; it provided us with a dose of historical background to the stunning buildings around each corner. I had a tough time keeping my mouth closed on the tour as we went from building to building, shocked by the beauty of the city.

The tour gave us just a glimpse of the city, so after lunch we were ready to delve deeper into a historical site. We started off big with St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The Romanesque and Gothic architecture made the whole cathedral seem surreal. Everything was ornate and had such detail that it just did not look real. However, the cathedral offered more than just its architecture. It had a rich, long history, part of which it literally still had in its depths: the catacombs. We were lucky enough to get a tour of the catacombs, where the remains of past Viennese continued to rest. I will not lie. It was a little creepy. Anyway, it capped off a great first day that left us in awe of Vienna.

 

Vienna Excursion 2012 – Day 1

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Our epic journey to Vienna started on Monday morning on the 5th of March. We met at the Hauptbahnhof in Bremen to make the hour and a half long trek by train to the Hamburger Airport. Flights are far cheaper from the bustling metropolis compared to our little provincial town of Bremen. The flight to Vienna was only about an hour and a half, and Air Berlin made our journey quite enjoyable feeding us delicious chocolates as we stepped down onto the welcoming soil of Vienna, Austria. It took a short ride on the city-airport train and an even shorter taxi ride to get to our perfectly located hotel. Our hotel was on a side street by the State Opera House and right at the end of the main shopping street. It was close to the Ringstrasse which is the circular street surrounding the inner city of Vienna.

Gwynnie, Steph, Jeff, Emily, John G., John P., Dr. Janine Ludwig (from left to right)

After we arrived in the late afternoon, we had a chance to settle in before we headed out for dinner at the Zwölf- Apostelkeller, a slightly kitschy, but nevertheless nice restaurant. The menu offered many different kinds of heavy meat and potatoes type meals, such as Schnitzel or Saftgulasch (chunks of meat with lots of sauce) with potatoes, just like any Heuriger (traditional Viennese restaurants) on the outskirts of Vienna would.

The restaurant was in the basement of a building (hence it being called Keller) and was very beautifully decorated. To make the evening all the more enjoyable there were musicians, a violinist and an accordion player. These two men played throughout the evening and even stopped by our table and took some requests, even humoring us by playing “Edelweiss”. I of course took the opportunity to shamelessly sing along; we were in Vienna after all, the city of music, and I just couldn’t help myself.

After dinner we all decided to stop at Zanoni and Zanoni, THE Ice cream place in Vienna. They have all kinds of ice cream, gelato, soy milk ice cream and even something called Milk Rice Ice Cream, which is actually quite delicious. It was a tad bit cold for frozen treats, but nevertheless it was incredibly delicious and that does tend to be what Germans do anyway: eat ice cream in winter. We then headed home for an early night, as we had an absurdly full week ahead of us.

 

Program review of the year 2009/10 – the first under new leadership

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Picture Janine Ludwig

Dr. Janine Ludwig

“Change” is possibly the best word to describe our last year here in Bremen, and so much has happened that we are unable to put it into one paragraph. First, Dr. Janine Ludwig took over as as new Academic Director of the program; the former director for one year, Carl Wege, took the chance to lead a research project in Bielefeld. After Dr. Ludwig, accompanied and assisted by Jens Schröder, a Bremen student and Program Coordinator since 2008, made an introductory visit to Dickinson at the end of September, during which we had many meetings and talks with different departments and people, we came back with a basket full of contacts, plans, ideas, requests and wishes. So we slowly started to restructure the program in order to meet these new challenges, to establish closer ties with the University of Bremen, and to improve the overall quality of our students’ stays.

We started small by first improving the Dickinson Room, which acts as our office and is also the place where our students can work and spend time between classes. We are now able to show movies, to invite people or parents over, and to hold video conferences and meetings there. Additionally, we created a media presence around our program, most visibly through our collective blog, where students also have the chance to upload pictures and videos. Of course, we are on Facebook as well ;-).

Dr. Ludwig designed an immensely rich and deep course for our Dickinson and Uni Bremen students that spans 300 years of transatlantic history: “Comparative Cultures – USA/Germany” that is part of the German major and listed as German 340 (please see: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/bremen/2018/01/20/german-340-comparative-cultures-usa-germany/).

Students with Dr. Carsten Sieling

Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig enhanced and enriched our excursions with stronger academic and historical content, matching students’ general academic interests. Whereas our first excursion to Vienna more generally presented the history of Germany, Austria and Europe, the next field trips where specifically designed according to student interests and majors: in Berlin, for example, we met with the German parliament representative from Bremen, Dr. Carsten Sieling, for a talk about the financial situation in Bremen and the economic crisis.

We also met with Hans-Ulrich Klose, a high-ranking politician and former major of Hamburg, who now serves as the federally appointed Transatlantic Coordinator for German-American partnership. Both visits gave the students unique insight into German politics. On our last excursion, to Brussels, we met with Dr. Helga Trüpel, a Member of the European Parliament who talked about Bremen’s relation to and role within the EU parliament. We visited the EU parliament, the embassy of Bremen and – of course – the Atomium. In each city we also tried to create a balanced program for the students, including time to pursue their own interests and to get to know life in the city itself.

At home, we intensified our ties with the University of Bremen. Very helpful in this process is the new head of the International Office here at the University, Dr. Annette Lang. Our closer cooperation led for example to an invitation for our Dickinson students to attend a private discussion with Auma Obama, half-sister of President Barack Obama. Dr. Ludwig contacted and continues to meet with many people at Uni Bremen, making our program – which formerly had been best known to students from Cultural Studies – more widely known and present on campus and in various departments. Last but not least: Our own cooperation agreement was also renewed this July. President Bill Durden and Rector Wilfired Müller signed the improved agreement which also served as a “birthday” present for our program – this year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of our partnership.

From left to right: Elke Durden, Sarah McGaughey, Janine Ludwig, Bill Durden

A telling sign of the strong relationship between Bremen and Dickinson followed in early July: the first presentation of an honorary degree in Dickinson’s history outside the United States! German writer and poet Günter Kunert was

Poet Günter Kunert (right)

conferred with the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters here at the University, led by President Durden and attended by Rector Müller, Professor McGaughey (of the Dickinson German Department), students, friends of Dickinson College and members of the university.

But we cannot forget our core responsibility of the program – our students. Among other things, Dr. Ludwig helped our student Kelsey Power to secure an internship at the Psychology Department here in Bremen. For a semester she was involved with the daily routine of the clinic and part of a team that performed diagnostic and therapy sessions as well as statistical tests to generate IQ scores. A valuable insight for a psychology major! (http://blogs.dickinson.edu/bremen/2010/04/26/internship/)

Besides their studies, the students followed their different interests. Andrew Shuman joined a local soccer club where he could continue practicing, as did Braeden Eastman and Thomas Vari with ultimate frisbee; other students went to festivals and travelled across Europe. Brent Te Velde, a program student from Trinity University, was able to enter the music conservatory here in Bremen and continued playing the organ in several nearby churches. And, of course, all students became huge fans of Werder Bremen, the professional local soccer club. They went to matches and training, bought jerseys, and collected autographs. This experience was only topped by the World Cup, where they celebrated every victory Paul the Octopus predicted in the streets with thousands of other Germans, doing so – most importantly – in German and with the German friends they made!

 

 

Inside German Politics

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by Andrew Shuman ’11

A few weeks ago, the Dickinson in Bremen program took a trip to Germany’s capital, Berlin. Most of the students, myself included, had been there before, so the novelty of tourism was somewhat lessened in degree, but the trip was nevertheless well worth it. The main reasons for that, from my point of view at least, were the two hour long meetings that Janine Ludwig arranged for us with two German politicians, Dr. Carsten Sieling, a representative to the German Parliament from Bremen, and Hans-Ulrich Klose, the coordinator of German-American cooperation. I’d never met with any politician on such an informal, small group basis, much less politicians with an active hand in the handling of a very much current crisis. That European crisis, which began with the massive debt issues in Greece, has seen the Euro plummet in value to about $1.20 and prompted the parliaments of the EU member nations to approve a massive rescue package for the beleaguered Greek government.

Dr. Carsten Sieling (with Dickinso shirt), Dickinson students, and Dr. Ludwig (right)

How Dr. Sieling, who is a member of the SPD political party, which, suffice it to say, means that we don’t exactly see eye to eye on economic issues, articulated the issues the German people and government were facing with regard to the Euro crisis was particularly impressive. As Americans, we’re pretty used to politicians giving short, sound-bite answers that are almost always ideological in nature. For instance, in the midst of the financial and credit crisis in the states, the favorite lines of politicians both right and left revolved around “the greed and excess of Wall Street” and “Wall Street taking down Main Street”. While politically pungent and polarizing, both lines are frustratingly simple, and when one really takes a closer look, they do next to nothing to explain how the US economy really collapsed.

Dr. Sieling, who was actually set to give a speech in the German Parliament later that day on the very issue of the Euro crisis, didn’t say a single thing that made him seem an ideologue.  On the contrary, his explanation of how the crisis developed was thoroughly reasonable, rational, and economically sound (which made me, as an econ major, very happy). He alluded to the fact that Germany’s ability to control labor costs relative to other Euro zone trading partners, namely Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, had enabled the German export economy to thrive with those nations as prime customers. As he noted, Greece’s negative balance of trade as an importing nation had caused the Greek government to become highly indebted, and some of its main creditors, ironically enough, were major German banks. Thus, as he understood only too well, the Germans were stuck between a rock and a hard place; if they let the Greeks fail, they would shoot their own banking system in the foot, and if they approved the bailout of Greece, German taxpayers would be on the hook (something they’re understandably not too happy about). In his place, I would have expected an American politician to boorishly point the finger at the eternal scapegoats of financial calamities, ‘greedy speculators’, as if speculation had been the sole cause of the Greek government’s debt problem and the rapid decline of the Euro.

Dr. Sieling, if I recall properly, only mentioned speculators once in the entire hour of conversation. Perhaps it’s that politicians wear a different face when behind closed doors with a small group of college students, but I couldn’t help but marvel at how well informed and incredibly candid he was. Of course, like a true politician, he wouldn’t exactly stop talking, which gave us very little chance to pose the questions we had prepared, but because he elaborated so well on the topic the one-sidedness of the conversation was hardly onerous.

Hans-Ulrich Klose (4th from left), Coordinator for Tranatlantic Cooperation

Hans-Ulrich Klose, whose job it is to conduct relations with America, seemed to welcome us very warmly. His demeanor and degree of candor was just as high as Dr. Sieling’s, and the way he approached the issue of dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions was particularly well-reasoned and rational. Rather than hanging his hat on economic sanctions or military threats to resolve the issue, Klose seemed to truly appreciate the depth and complexity of the issue, like a true diplomat. He stressed the extreme importance of collaborating with Russia in any negotiations with the Iranian regime, as the Russians have a high degree of interest in preserving Iran as a source of energy.

As someone who has become somewhat disillusioned with the deterioration of American politics into partisanship and mindless ideological sound-bites, the experience in Berlin taught me that American politicians could learn a lot from their German counterparts. Instead of saying one thing and doing another, I truly got the sense that Dr. Sieling and Hans-Ulrich Klose were speaking to us as honestly as they would to a meeting of the German parliament.

Dickinson Reise to Wien

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On February 9th, the Dickinson group left Bremen for an even colder Vienna, Austria, for a 5-day stay. Despite the bitter cold and snow, the sights in Vienna were really quite exceptional. In fact, even though I complained about it at the time, I think the white stuff enhanced the look of the already-beautiful buildings. No, it definitely did. Aside from amazing, Baroque-style buildings, we certainly were spoon-fed dosage after dosage of culture. From cathedral and museum visits to plays at the theater, we certainly experienced the Viennese culture. Among the highlights were trips to the Schatzkammer, a treasury which houses the priceless collection of ornately-designed jewels and crowns and robes and lances and goblets from the Holy Roman Empire and old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, which is easily the largest library in Austria as it holds 7.4 million works in its collection and is also lavishly decorated in the Baroque style with frescoes and marble pillars and, well, marble everything.

During our free day, I opted to head out to the Zentralfriedhof (it’s a big cemetery) and pay my respects to the classical-music Gods. Armed with my iPod (which was conveniently playing Beethoven and Mozart), I walked the grounds and saw the graves of Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, and then a memorial to Mozart (he’s actually buried in a mass grave in a smaller graveyard nearby, which I did visit as well). The stroll around the cemetery was only made better by the constant snowfall, which delicately covered the evergreens and graves and made the place seem not as sullen, but at the same time, I was reminded of my location by the muffled sounds of the city from the snow and the desolate feel that can sometimes accompany winter. It was quite cool. The one surprise from my visit was the discovery of Johann Hans Hölzel’s grave. In life, Mr. Hölzel was an Austrian composer of sorts but was more commonly known as the pop musician Falco. His many hits include most notably “Rock Me Amadeus,” which you can hear below, if you so choose. I felt it odd that this man was bumping elbows with Beethoven in death while the man about whom he sang in life rested a couple miles away. Of course, I’m not really complaining, and actually, I kicked myself at the time for not having at least one of his songs on my iPod.

The last thing about Vienna that I will briefly mention is the food, for it is so good. Specifically, Wiener Schnitzel-Vienna’s speciality-is a thin slice of heaven (a fried cutlet of veal or pork) and should be consumed by each and every one of you before you die (unless you happen to be a vegetarian, of course). I could talk about much more, for the trip to Vienna was certainly a great experience, but really, I can only use beautiful and incredible so many times before I start sounding boring and redundant.